


am i someone special (or am i next to be tossed out?)

by Mystic_Diamond



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, Bullying, Character Study, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Codependency, Deconstruction, Domestic Violence, Drug Addiction, F/F, F/M, Female Homosexuality, Homophobia, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Minor Character Death, Misogyny, Obsession, One-Sided Relationship, References to Depression, Sexual Harassment, Sibling Incest, Slut Shaming, Suicide Attempt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 15:45:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13744155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mystic_Diamond/pseuds/Mystic_Diamond
Summary: You explained to all of them their connection to each other, how each of them were her playthings, her toys that she spun around on a puppet string in order to stave off her perpetual boredom.You wanted all of them to realize how stupid they were for worshipping her so goddamn much, long after she abandoned all of them, how it didn’t matter how much light she supposedly brought them, in the end, she all dragged them into inescapable darkness.But in the end, it was futile.Because Clarisse Janson was like fire. Something beautiful and warm, and when you had previously spent your life in a cold and dark place, a fire can seem like a blessing from God Himself.But no matter how bright and warm fire was, no matter how much it saved you from freezing to death, it was still lethal. It still burned when you got too close. It could still kill you if you grew too attached to it.And in the end, a fire flickers out. No matter how hard you try to preserve it. It always died when the night grows too dark or the cold too unbearable.(It always abandoned you.)





	am i someone special (or am i next to be tossed out?)

* * *

_i. the free spirit_

* * *

Hector Christiansen thought himself the only one who saw the world the way he did. Thought himself the only one who wanted to do nothing more than to run away, run away to a place where no one knew him, break the monotonous routine that shackled him down every day and just fly away.

Fly away from his parents, his friends, his school, his town. Every day there was the same, dreadfully dull and stagnant. There was nothing there that hurt him, but there was nothing there that excited him either. Every day, the same old, same old. His mother who kissed him goodbye before he went to school, the friends who clapped him on the back for getting a mediocre grade on a mediocre test, the cat who begged him for scraps when he walked home.

Hector wanted to burn it all down. Burn it and start anew in another world, another place, anywhere that wasn’t the dying middle-of-nowhere town in a country that’s doomed to crumble and fall. He thought himself as completely alone in his thoughts and his ideas.

Until he met _her_.

_Her_ , who was a bright inferno that sparked and jumped in a room full of timid candlelights.

_Her_ , who was a red-tailed phoenix, soaring through the sky and scorching her name into the clouds.

_Her_ , who was so beautiful and brilliant and shining that you swore the sun followed her everywhere she went, engulfing her with an angelic aura.

Clarisse Janson, Hector remembered her name, remembered how loopy her handwriting was when she scrawled her signature onto the whiteboard of the classroom, how she dotted her i’s with not a sickly cute heart, but with the head of a fire-breathing dragon that confirmed what everyone was thinking in the room.

Clarisse Janson was going to be someone special.

And just being next to her made Hector himself special.

_Finally_ , he thought when he felt her flame-red fingernails dig into his shoulder as if marking him as the boy she’s going to claim. _Finally, someone who understands._

Someone who understood how suffocating it was. How suffocating it was to breathe the same air every day, how much you wanted to strangle your friends and your teachers and your parents for saying the same dull droll every day, every day without fail. Someone who too, wanted to burn everything down til kingdom come.

He made his plans with her, wrote down every single detail into their shared journal, a journal filled with hopes and dreams. How they were going to run away, run away from everything, and start anew. What they were going to bring with them, where they’ll go, who deserved at least a goodbye before leaving the town for good.

(Hector’s list was short, only including his mother, a select few friends, and the stray cat that he fed every other day, but Clarisse’s was even shorter, only occupying a tattered sticky note that she refused to show him.)

_It was going to be incredible_ , Hector believed. It was going to be everything he hoped for, dreamed of, and it was all going to be spent with the girl he wanted to be with forever.

Hector loathed the idea of staying in one place, of being shackled down with things like family, marriage, career. All his friends seemed content just to keep their head down and fall down the road everyone before them built for them to walk down. Hector wanted to jump off the edge of it and soar. See if he’ll drop straight down or find a whole new world in the heavens.

But Clarisse . . . . oh, Clarisse.

She was the first person who he would ever want to drop down on his knees for and forever suspend himself to one home, one world, if it would mean she would stay with him forever.

He saw girls the same way he saw life: an array of toys to play with until you found one to distract yourself with for a while before picking up the next. But he never wanted to stop playing with, stop running with, stop kissing with, stop feeling with, stop touching, stop experiencing life with Clarisse. He never wanted it to end.

(It wasn’t until she vanished from the passenger seat of his battered truck in the middle of the night while he was asleep, the very first night of the trip they planned since forever ago, disappeared and left the spot next to him empty and alone and bare.)

(He can’t comprehend the feeling in his chest, his ever-beating heart suddenly freezing over, the bones in his body breaking and snapping apart despite him being completely still, his head spinning, spinning, spinning, like he was stuck on an essay question in a goddamn stupid test he doesn’t understand--)

(Oh.)

(He knew this feeling. The emptiness inside his chest. The fragile sobbing of his heart. The desperation to run, run, run until you keeled over vomiting.)

(Abandonment.)

(The hole inside of his body, the slit cut into his chest to let everything inside of him, heart and veins and dreams and hopes, fall out like candy within a pinata.)

(It was called abandonment.)

* * *

 

_ii. the recluse_

* * *

Jackson Hathaway was tired of life.

He was tired of waking and realizing that the cracked, crumbling ceiling above him was his so-called home. He was tired of how numb his body felt, even when he was soaking in a hot bath. He was tired of the man who insisted on Jackson calling him his “father” banging on the bathroom door, asking why the hell was he taking so long, it wasn’t like there was anyone at school he needed to make himself pretty for.

(He was tired of having to hide the blood-crusted scalpel from his ever-so-concerned “mother,” of having to hide away his uneaten meals in the bathroom trash can so he won’t have to see her plastic smile waver.)

(Then again, he didn’t know why he cared specifically, because he knew she and her bastard of a husband only took him in because of the monthly stipend.)

There was once a time where video games filled that gaping hole for him. A time where he loved the characters within an online MMORPG more than he loved his fellow, breathing classmates. A time where he closed off his entire world until it only contained his PC, his console, a few bags of hot chips and bottles of Mountain Dew, and the peeling walls of his room.

When the only time he ever spoke to his parents and his sister was through the dust-flecked door of his self exile room.

_“Jackson darling, are you sure don’t want to go on our family road trip with us? We’re going to the mountains and sightseeing and maybe even canoeing if your father can--”_

_“I can’t, Mom.”_

_“Honey, it’s been forever since we hung out as a family and--”_

_“Mom. I’m. Not. Interested.”_

_“ . . . . . you know, darling, your father and I poured a lot of money into this trip for you and your sister. And your teachers have been telling me you’ve skipping class lately.”_

_“Are you seriously trying to guilt trip me into this?”_

_“Sweetheart--”_

_“The only reason you’re doing this is because you want to make us look like a perfect family again, right? You want to pretend that you and Dad aren’t throwing plates at each other in the middle of the night, huh? You want to pretend your son isn’t turning into a recluse? You want to pretend Olivia isn’t crying herself to sleep every night? If you want to live a shiny, perfect fantasy, I don’t know why you’re trying to get me to be a part of it. I’d clearly wreck it to pieces just by being there.”_

_“ . . . . . honey, I want you to smile the way you did when you were little. Smile with me and your father and your sister. As much as high school is difficult, you can’t live like this forever.”_

_“Mom, I don’t want to be around people right now.”_

_“Do you hate being around people . . . . . or do you hate being around your family?”_

_“ . . . . . . . . .”_

_“ . . . . . . . . I’ll make sure to bring you back a souvenir, honey . . . . .”_

_“Whatever, Mom. Just go already.”_

Jackson never did get that souvenir.

Or a phone call from his mother during the trip. Or even the chance to say “Welcome back!” as his parents and his little sister haul themselves over the threshold of their home.

_“And next on our news broadcast is the tragic accident on the Interstate, as it takes the lives of three people and gravely injuring five._

_“We can at least bless the family of three died on impact and didn’t suffer. We all pray for the deaths of David and Michelle Hathaway and their eleven-year-old daughter Olivia.”_

He should’ve died with them. Why didn’t he?

It was his own selfishness that helped him survive, after all. He was too much of a brat to want to spend time with his family, help his mother mend the bonds between the four of them. He decided his guild friends in _Fruits De Mer_ were more valuable to him than his own flesh and blood.

While he was celebrating taking down a boss with his friends, his parents and his sister were left bleeding on the highway, rendered unsalvageable by how quickly their ruined car caught fire after the impact. His mother and his father and his little sister died because they wanted to be a family again. Jackson lived because he refused to be a part of it.

Why should he live? Why should he be eating food freshly put on a table for him and sleeping with a roof over his head? Why should he grow up and graduate high school when he knows his parents won’t be there to congratulate him? Why should he become an adult when he knows his sister was robbed forever of that chance?

It’s not like the Jeffersons really wanted him all that much, anyways. Mr. Jefferson takes any chance he gets to remind him how much the food he eats costs and how much space he’s taking up in his precious house. Mrs. Jefferson just wanted someone to suffer alongside her underneath the presence of her domineering husband.

And he can’t ignore the fact that students at school were making bets on how long it’ll take for Jackson to finally off himself. Any person there who bothered to be nice to him only did so after hearing about the “tragedy of the Hathaway family.”

No one needed him. No one will cry for him. Everyone was waiting for him to do it.

Even if he does at school in broad daylight, no one will be there to stop him from killing himself. So he does.

He goes to the school rooftop right during lunch, hovered above an area where he would know people will see his dead body.

Gotta give the people what they want, right?

He sucked in his breath as his feet inch ever-so-closely towards the precipice of the roof. He can’t chicken out right now. He had been planning this for weeks. And he was sure he was high up enough so it’ll be an instant death, that the damage will be too irreparable for any paramedics to fix.

(Maybe he should’ve thrown himself onto the streets in front of a moving car, that would’ve been real poetic, but people can survive getting hit by a car, and Jackson can’t have that, can he?)

He stepped forward, expecting to feel the cold, unforgiving concrete, feel his bones snap and fall apart, be blanketed with the sweet release of death (maybe even feel his mother’s embrace again) . . . . . .

And feels red lacquered nails dig into his shoulders instead, a pair of alabaster arms wrapping around his waist, the smell of cinnamon and cigarettes enveloping him like an embrace.

Clarisse Janson, her name was, the new transfer student who probably filled out the “new transfer student” trope to such a tee that Jackson was sure he hated her at first. Wild, mysterious, with a signature flame-red pout and matching fingernails.

She embodied life and warmth and youth, never missing an opportunity to have fun and go on an adventure, even if it meant abandoning everything she was doing right at the moment.

She was like a child, in a way. She had such a short attention span and got bored easily. She hated being ignored and made sure everywhere she went, she left a little mark behind, whether it was her name scrawled into a random desk or her lipstick smeared on the window, as if to prove to people “Hey, I exist and no matter what you do, you can’t suppress my presence.”

Everyone loved her. And everyone who hated her secretly loved her.

Girls bemoaned about how they weren’t exciting and fearless like her. Boys desperately trailed behind her like puppies, chased after the smoldering wake of fire she left behind her only to get scorched.

And when Jackson came to in her arms, she immediately declared herself his guardian angel and pressed a kiss to his forehead, leaving behind a bright red mark behind.

He thought it a joke at first, preparing for the moment Clarisse gets down from her high as a hero who saved a depressed student’s life and leaves him behind, but when he approached his locker the next day, vaguely wondering which hardware shop should he visit in order to buy some rope to hang himself with, he saw Clarisse smiling wildly like she didn’t see him attempt to kill himself yesterday.

“Are you here because I forgot to thank you for saving my life?” Jackson drawled, bored and wanting her to leave.

“What are you talking about?” Clarisse said with a tilt of her blond-framed head. “I haven’t saved your life yet.”

“But you kept me from--”

“I might’ve kept you from jumping off that roof, but I still haven’t saved you from that darkness you’re drowning in,” Clarisse said while spinning around on her heel. “And as long as you’re still depressed, my quest as your guardian angel goes unfinished.”

“Who says you’re my guardian angel--mmpf!”

Red lipstick gets smeared onto Jackson’s mouth, like on the windows Clarisse marked every day, no matter how many times the janitor wiped it away.

(And thus, he was claimed.)

(And thus, he fell.)

Clarisse did everything Jackson thought was previously impossible. She made him look forward to waking up in the morning. She made him light up with warmth with just a smile. She lit a flickering fire within himself that he once thought died out forever ago.

When her flame-red nails graze against his wrists hard enough to leave behind scars, he couldn’t find himself caring in the slightest. It meant that he was hers.

(She could probably pour gasoline on him and fling a match, and he would still thank her.)

Was this what it was like to be in love? It had to be. This fire in Jackson’s fingertips. The warmth that spreads from head to toe just from being near Clarisse.

(The bleak coldness he feels when he doesn't find her at his grasp.)

(The way color completely drained from his world when he doesn’t get the chance to see her for a day, wanting desperately to ask what’s wrong, but at the same time, scared to approach her and look whiny.)

(The darkness creeping over his shoulder again when she forgets to text him, when he doesn’t hear her voice all week, on the days she decided to ditch town for an adventure without telling him until she came back a week later. The darkness that sank its claws into his shoulder and told him that it was obvious he didn’t matter to Clarisse, that she just saw him as a pet project, that he should go jump off another roof so she would pay attention to him again--)

He loves her. He loves Clarisse more than he could ever love himself. He loves her more than he loved breathing, loved living, loved being young.

(He doesn’t enjoy living or breathing at all, only loves it when it’s done with her, and done with her only. Everyone one else just keeps saying the same things over and over, suggesting that he spends too much time with Clarisse, that she’s a toxic person, that she never stays in one town for too long and will eventually leave--)

(Fuck, why should he listen to them in first place? They didn’t care about him they way she did. They weren’t there when he tried to jump off that roof. Hell, if they were in her position, they would’ve egged him on.)

(Only Clarisse cared about him. Only Clarisse loved him. Only Clarisse was capable of loving someone as disgusting and broken like him, a guy who let his whole family die without him.)

He loves her. He can’t do anything without her. He _won’t_ do anything without her.

He refuses to live without her. He refuses to breathe without her. He refuses to see color, hear music, feel warmth if none of it came directly from Clarisse Janson.

(Everything else in life hurts, after all. Everything else was meaningless, after all. There’s only one person out there capable of loving him and that was Clarisse.)

The world comes alive when he’s in her presence. It goes flat when she disappears from his grasp. That’s how he accepted the way things worked in his relationship with her. It didn’t bother him in the slightest.

(And when she left, left after only seven months, left without even leaving behind a note or a clue to where she was now . . . . .)

(He tries to replicate the fiery red of her nails by filling his whole bathtub with the red of his blood.)

* * *

_iii. the musician_

* * *

Oliver Lark doesn’t know why he plays the piano, only knows that it’s definitely not because he loves it.

It was a weirdly fantastical miracle. People said that everyone needed to pour love into their craft, but if Oliver was supposedly pouring something into his music, it certainly wasn’t love.

The way he played was simple: he pressed the keys in accordance to what was written on the sheet music.

Other pianists wanted to say that their process was long and complicated, that they needed to feel the music before playing, that they needed to be one with their instruments. They wanted to make playing the piano sound exclusive, that it was impossible to be able to play unless you were a refined intellectual of the highest pedigree.

Oliver would like to clarify that such nonsense is bullshit. Anyone can play the piano. Anyone who can read sheet music without getting lost and anyone who can press the keys correctly. You can search a few videos online and learn to master the piano through there. He was sick of people thinking piano was some sort of exclusive art only for the refined. Anyone could do it. Anyone.

Some of the things people say when they praise Oliver’s music were absolutely ridiculous: _they could hear how much passion he poured into it; it was like their emotions and his were one and the same; it wasn’t a song, it was an experience_.

Oliver poured no passion into his music.

He couldn’t tell what his audience was feeling until he was done with the performance and heard their applause raining down on him.

His songs were just songs, not even his songs even. They were things born from the brains of dead people in powdery white wigs. Oliver paid no contribution to such songs, always followed the score robotically until it was over.

Why does he play the piano? Why force himself to play something he hates so much?

Because there was absolutely nothing else he was good at.

He tried to pour love and effort into other things. Art, for example. He loved comic books and admired the bright colors popping off the page, of the stories etched into the drawings, stories about heroes and villains and how justice saved the day in the end.

In the beginning, there was nothing he loved more than drawing comic books.

(Trash cans full of unfinished sketches and manuscripts. Him sitting at his desk in the middle of the night, racking through his brain for fresh ideas, anything inspired and unique and creative, anything that could impress judges at comic magazine competitions, anything that’ll at least end up in the “honorable mentions” list, anything that’ll stop his friends from calling him a “wannabe” and a “loser.”)

(Eventually, his colored pencils ended up in the waste bucket too.)

It was cruel, really. The one thing Oliver loved more than anything, wanted to make a career out of more than anything, he perpetually failed at.

Drawings came out crude and inadequate no matter how many lessons he took and how many hours he poured into it. Any stories he bothered to tell got brushed off as “outlandish,” “won’t appeal to the general audience,” “doesn’t fit the formula,” even though he spent countless hours into the night constructing worlds and designing characters.

When it came to piano, Oliver tapped at the keys idly. He did what the sheet music told him to do. He did what every music teacher told him to do.

He’s immediately renowned as a piano genius, as a boy prodigy who could carve stories out of the ivory keys and etch his heart into the songs he played.

He attempted to say what he really thought about piano, about how music bored him and how he infinitely preferred telling stories through colored pencils and parchment, about how he honestly couldn’t tell the difference between his own playing and his five-year-old cousin trying to imitate him.

But when the awards were thrusted into his arms, when flower petals showered him from above, when his parents finally smiled at as if to say Finally, you managed to do something worthwhile, the words he wanted to say fumbled and fell apart before they could even make it past his lips.

(His wings were quickly ensnared into the spiderweb the moment he holds back. He could’ve wriggled free, he could’ve fought back, he could’ve found himself soaring again, and yet . . . . . .)

He forces himself to play the piano. He threw away his old manuscripts and took down his posters of One Piece characters in favor of dead guys in powdered wigs in an effort to prove to his family _Hey, I like piano, I really do. It doesn’t make me want to tear my hair out and break my own fingers._

It’s not like his parents cared what he hung in his room, though. They just loved the envelopes stuffed full of cash he brought home after winning regional and state competitions. They loved shoving themselves in front of Oliver when reporters clamored for interviews, filling out the index cards Oliver had to memorize and recite in front of the camera after competitions.

His friends patted him on the back, all and fine, but their smiles were shaky when they saw Oliver broadcasted on the TV screen, on talk shows and with famous musicians. They nervously turned down Oliver’s invitations to hang out and read comics together, always seemed desperate to end the conversation whenever their friend attempted to start them.

(Oliver doesn’t know if it’s jealousy or if it’s because they’re intimidated that a renowned celebrity is trying to make conversation with them and they believe he’s mocking them by pretending they’re still on the same level, but Oliver can’t be bothered with trying to find out why.)

(Because if they genuinely believe he’s happy playing the piano, can’t hear the cries of help he etches into his music, can’t see how robotic he is on stage whilst showered with rose petals, then his friends aren’t really his friends at all.)

No one saw how miserable Oliver is.

Everyone, from his parents to his teachers to his so called “friends.” How could they, anyway?

Oliver Lark had wealth, fame, prestige, all at the age of seventeen. He didn’t need to go to college and get a million useless degrees in order to carve himself into history. He already had a title for himself, already had earned a living for himself winning competitions without ever having to succeed in school or impress college scouts.

If anything, he was already a full-blown adult.

(He had the money, the title, and the crippling depression, after all.)

And since he was an adult in everyone’s minds, then everyone assumed he had it all together.

He had his source of income. He had his title, an audience ready to drop to their knees to hear his music. He made his parents proud. He must be happy.

(He must be.)

(He’s an adult.)

(He has it all together.)

(He’s achieved everything a person wants at his age.)

(He should be happy.)

Oliver had long resigned himself into being alone in his despair, in his loneliness. He had long resigned into living his life with a plastic smile, pretending to love what he did, pretending that he didn’t want to scream out into the gaping auditorium he performed at weekly.

He was going to play the piano, not break his own fingers like he often found himself fantasizing about in the middle of the night, and earn his income like a proper adult. He’ll wait to find peace again when he retires.

(If they’ll even let him before he died.)

That was his plan. To resign himself into the despair of not being able to do what he loved, stuck in a craft he hated so much, and wait for the everlasting peace of retirement or death (whichever came first).

Until . . . . .

“You absolutely suck at playing the piano! And I was told you were the wondrous Boy Prodigy!”

Such words should’ve incited his rage, should’ve lit a fire within him, should’ve made him knock over his stool over his tantrum of hearing someone insult his music.

And yet . . . . .

“Fucking finally someone called me out on that!” Oliver nearly knocked over the stool he was sitting on in his excitement. He was literally squealing and smiling over someone calling him a poser.

The blonde girl who issued him the insult didn’t even look all that surprised. She only tilted her head and smiled mischievously, letting her platinum-colored curls fall over her left shoulder.

“Wow~! Despite insulting the craft you spent years perfecting and performing, you seem pretty damn happy!”

“I’ve been waiting all my life to hear those words!” Oliver said with the most childish smile. It was like he was nine again. To hear I suck at the piano. To hear that I was terrible at it.”

“Even though you make your damn money off of it? I always considered myself pretty smart when it comes to people, but I don’t get you. Who would want to be bad at what they do?”

“Because there’s nothing I hate more than the piano,” Oliver said darkly and flatly, but it deeply contrasted the grin still on his face, creating an unintentionally malicious image. “I didn’t even want to be good at it. I don’t even practice or put any effort into it. It’s like a curse. I could literally bang the keys until they break and people would still call me a musical genius. It’s torture. I’m trapped. There’s no place I hate more than this stage where we’re standing on right now.”

The girl frowned and then spun lazily around on her heel in a slow circle. “That sounds like torture. Utter despair.”

“It is,” Oliver breathed out, and it was like pure bliss. To finally unspool the feelings deeply coiled within him. It was like carving out a malignant tumor. Finally separating from the one thing that was causing you utter despair. “I swear, getting me to love the piano is an impossible task. An outright miracle if you could get it to happen.”

Suddenly, deep blood-colored nails grabbed him from behind.

He found himself sitting on the seat of the piano stool despite not making any motion of his own volition. A pair of pale arms snaked down his shoulders, trailing past his elbows and forearms, and smooth, slender fingers were now wrapped around his wrists, interlacing with his own fingers, positioning his hands over the piano keys. His back was pressed against a warm chest, and there was a warm, earthy scent of cinnamon engulfing his senses now.

A delicate, alabaster-colored chin was daintily balanced over his shoulder, hovering near his ear. A warm breath wrapped around the side of his head, sending shivers down his spine.

“Oh, is that a challenge I hear~?”

(Blood suffused in Oliver’s cheeks and ears. He can’t remember the last time he had been in such close contact with a girl.)

(Already, he was falling.)

Her name was Clarisse Janson, he later learned.

Initially, Oliver thought of Clarisse’s response to his words as a joke she crafted just to get a chance to feel him up, to flirt with him.

A few months ago, he discovered the existence of a fan club for him (which made zero sense, because he was a goddamn pianist, not a boy band member!) The girls there were utterly obsessed with him, but Oliver could find no flattery within himself when thinking about them. They loved him on a shallow level, after all. If they heard about how much he despised his own craft, they would abandon him in a heartbeat.

(He couldn’t find himself trusting another girl after realizing that.)

But Clarisse wasn’t like any of those girls. Because every single goddamn time Oliver came to the town auditorium to “practice” piano, there was Clarisse, in all her Marilyn Monroe curls and blood-red lipstick. A spark in her eyes that screamed _Challenge accepted_.

He didn’t know how she did it. She didn’t say anything different than what most of his piano tutors said.

_Pour your heart into the notes and the audience will hear. Don’t be afraid to go off the score, play your own interpretation of the music. Focus on what’s in your heart, not what’s on the sheets._

He previously brushed off such words with an internal eye roll and a silent scoff.

It was all just flowery gibberish made to make music sound super complex and exclusive, to make beginners think playing will be an insurmountable task for them to accomplish.

But when Clarisse perched herself behind him on the piano bench, interlacing her fingers with his to get him to play, there was suddenly light dancing on the keys. There was heat running through his veins. Everything came alive when she and him played together.

Playing by himself had always been monotonous and utterly mind-draining.

But with Clarisse . . . . it was like he finally understood.

Why some of his competitors finished their songs off with a flourish and looked towards with audience with sweat dripping down their face and a delirious smile. Why they cried when they heard that they won the competition. Because finishing a song was like coming down from a high.

An entirely separate reality filled with color and light, where nothing else exists but the piano and you.

(And in Oliver’s case, him and the piano and Clarisse.)

He only experienced the sweet high when Clarisse perched herself behind him when he played. Eventually, enough practice together got him to experience that high when she was in the audience listening to him.

Just knowing she was in near proximity sent jolts of pleasure and heat through his body, and not in the slightest bit sexual way.

It was like being near a flickering fire when you’ve felt nothing but bleak coldness your whole life. It was like suddenly eating for the first time after spending days starving.

Suddenly being filled up after being empty and listless for so long was how Oliver felt around Clarisse.

There was even a palpable difference in his music. Everywhere, people raved over how much more vivacious Oliver’s playing had gotten, how much more depth was added to his music.

(When asked about the sudden change on a talk show, Oliver smiled coyly and said it was a secret. Clarisse was his and his alone, after all. He won’t let anyone else know about what they shared.)

When realizing how much Clarisse changed him, Oliver suddenly had a reason to look forward to the future.

He finally found himself loving what he did, found himself wanting to keep doing it. He wanted to do it with Clarisse and no one else.

Without her, he would’ve kept himself ensnared in that spiderweb, wings caught and doing nothing to fight against his restraints.

She cut all his strings loose, made him realize what he was missing out on, gave him an experience no one else can provide him. She was his muse, his darling, his absolute everything. Without her, music would’ve remained dull and lifeless. She was his everything.

(And when he clamored down from the steps of the stage, holding the American Protégé International Piano and Strings Competition first-place trophy in his arms, he immediately zoomed for the guest of honor seat he provided for her, front and center to his victory, their victory.)

(And found the seat completely empty.)

* * *

_iv. the good girl_

* * *

Chastity Ackerman wouldn’t know how to live if it wasn’t for the guidance of her parents.

One could call her a sheltered girl. From what Chastity could glean from her childhood, her parents had always cooped her up inside their home, giving her dolls and makeup kits to keep her at bay. They never dared let anything that could corrupt a little girl past the threshold of their home. And much of the time, the only times Chastity got to socialize was going to school.

(She learned to be terrified of other people, terrified of their words and their fists. She remembered boys’ hands grabbing at her hair and girls throwing their garbage into her cubby hole, contrasted to her mother’s soft caresses and her father’s big bear hugs.)

(She learned to love home more than she could ever love anywhere else.)

Her parents were seemingly determined to mold her into the perfect Christian daughter. No clothes that weren’t crisp and perfectly-pressed, nothing that exposed her shoulders or anything above the knee. No exposure to anything that defiled the name of their lord and savior, God. And certainly no exposure to anything that didn’t fit the standards of the perfect nuclear family like the Ackermans were.

Most children would’ve screamed and kicked against such treatment. Chastity knew that if her classmates in such situations like this, they would’ve yelled and screeched at the top of their lungs until they were free of their cage.

(But when all Chastity knew was how to live in a cage and how to be the perfect daughter, how was she supposed to rebel? How was she supposed to know what to do by herself without the words her mother and father whispered in her ear? She would just end up lost and listless, no guidelines to follow or instincts to rely on.)

(That was why she never bothered to do anything to stand up against her parents.)

(What was the point of rebelling when you didn’t know what to do with yourself afterwards?)

One of Chastity’s earliest childhood memories was watching a wedding broadcast on the TV screen, while grooming her doll’s hair. Her father was perched behind her on his big comfy recliner while her mother was in the kitchen making lunch.

Her father immediately grabbed for the remote the moment Chastity looked up to see a woman in overflowing white walk down the aisle with another woman in tow, wearing a dress equally as frilly but not identical in the slightest.

_“Dad! Why did you switch the channel! Those ladies were wearing really pretty dresses!”_

_“They’re not people you should look up to, darling.”_

_“But they look so beautiful together! Was that a wedding? They were both holding bouquets!”_

_“No, honey, that wasn’t a wedding.”_

_“Then what was it?”_

_“It’s a cruel mockery of everything marriage stands for. Merely two women pretending they can replicate what me and your mother can be. It’s a disgusting act against God.”_

It wasn’t until she was thirteen did Chastity truly understand what her father meant.

Girls were supposed to love boys. Anything that didn’t fit the mold of what God defined as a family was blasphemy against His rule. She was supposed to fall in love with men. She was supposed to marry them. She was supposed to bear their children and raise their families.

As many times as Chastity muttered such rules to herself, as many times as she repeated it inside her head in the middle of the night . . . . she couldn’t stop it.

Finding her eyes fixated on Felicity Pham in the middle of algebra class. Her cheeks flushing when Alyssa O’Reilly started to flaunt her endowments after realizing how much her chest blossomed in the midst of puberty. Her skin still tingling for hours on end after Kelly Shapiro hugged her in a fit of excitement when Chastity agreed to tutor her in English.

She tried to stop it, she really did.

She rebuffed any offerings to hang out with female classmates after school in fear of what she might do to them and how they would react. She forced herself to go out with any guy who would look her way, often kissing them after the first date and taking any opportunity to press herself up against them in search of anything, anything, that might resemble lust or infatuation.

Nothing.

There was no flutter in her pulse, no heat crawling up her neck, not even the shallowest of sexual arousal.

Her parents were repulsed to find out just how many boys she was hanging out with after school, and with how Chastity rebuffed any girls who offered to be her friend, it all in all made her look like a trashy girl who loved to shove it in other girls’ faces how many boys she can snatch away from them.

Despite how clean and proper she dressed, her polished grades, and prim demeanor, no one could get over how boys she dumped and how many of them she kissed and groped in effort to feel any sort of arousal, any sort of reassurance that she was normal and loved boys the way she was supposed to.

Thus, the nickname “Chastity the Unchaste” that was given birth in eighth grade and followed well into her high school years.

It was awful. Every guy who heard of her reputation took the chance to cop a feel of Chastity whenever she was innocently walking through the halls or heading out of school. They snaked fingers up her skirt and slid their hands up her back to get a feel of her bra strap.

They brushed off her attempts to shove them off, saying with the way she acted in middle school, no must mean yes when it came to girls like her.

None of her female classmates came to her aid, seeing her trying to fend off the creeping hands of sleazy guys as “playing hard to get.”

They had no sympathy for girls who snatched away other girls’ boyfriends and were desperate to kiss after the first date (in which Chastity never even did do the former). They saw all the treatment Chastity was getting from boys as “fair comeuppance.”

It got even worse when Chastity accidentally let slip hints of her attraction to the same sex.

When a girl caught her staring at her topless in the locker room, all hell broke loose.

_“So not only do you need to prey on all the available boys here, you need to start getting your grubby fingers onto us now?! Are you shameless or what?”_

Now no girl trusted Chastity to touch them, to look at them for more than three seconds. They can’t have her “preying” on them the way she did boys.

(Chastity sees the way they flinch when her fingers come near, hears how they accuse her of trying to grope them. Though her intuition wants to tell them they’re wrong, her heart can’t help but say they’re right.)

(She’s a danger to all of them, for having such sordid desires.)

She knows she could tell her parents. They would immediately rush to her defense, cry out against any classmate of Chastity who accuses her of being a slut, of being a temptress who preys on men and women alike. They would always take her side.

(Except when it was God that separated her from them.)

But if she tried to get their help, she knew they would question her behavior in middle school, which was the precursor to her classmates’ treatment of her. They would need proof that their daughter wasn’t a slut like her classmates said that she is, that there must’ve been some reason that Chastity chased after so many boys and took no interest in any of them.

(She imagined their silhouettes turning into looming shadows when she tells them, tells them of her disgusting secret, imagined how they would throw her out onto the street the way her aunt and uncle did to her seventeen-year-old cousin.)

(The words tangled and fumbled on her tongue until they had dissipated completely, like they were never there in the first place.)

She accepted everyone else’s treatment as what she deserved. It was God’s divine retribution, right? Her punishment for not coming out the way she was supposed to, not being able to be the perfect daughter her parents wanted, for being so shameless during her middle school years.

To everyone, she was a pariah, a harlot, someone you shouldn’t be associated with lest you be corrupted as well.

Everyone, except . . . . .

“I guess you’re a fellow harlot, huh?”

“W-What?” Chastity’s head snapped up at the sound of someone’s voice. It had been so long since she heard someone bother to talk to her during lunch.

“I heard the rumors,” the girl smiled. She had cherry-colored lips and nails to match, along with a head of fluffy blonde curls. “Frankly, when I heard about you, I envisioned you to look completely different than what’s sitting in front of me.”

Chastity smiled, even though she knew she shouldn't. She shouldn’t be accepting this girl’s kindness so readily, like she deserved it. Like she was worthy of such things. “What were you expecting?” The blonde girl grinned and plopped herself right next to Chastity. Close. Too close.

(Chastity’s heartbeat quivered.)

“Flowing red hair. Maybe some crazy huge tits, the kind you see in plastic-surgery-gone-wrong kind of articles. A tattoo, even. Someone who would be really rad to hang out with.”

Chastity’s fingers grasped the edges of her skirt. She was suddenly self-conscious about everything she was wearing. Her mother bought all of her clothes and her hair was plain, brown, and always tied up in a simple braided crown with the rest of her hair reaching her shoulders. She was utterly unremarkable, and that aspect of her shined even brighter when next to someone as stunning as the nameless blonde girl.

“Am I . . . . . disappointing?” The blonde girl’s mouth quirked up into a radiant smile. “Of course not. You’re a million times better.”

From then on, it was like nothing mattered except for Clarisse’s (the name of the girl she learned later on) approval.

Chastity had always looked over the edge of the cage her parents raised her in and quivered in fear of what was below. It was unknown. It was dangerous. Most of all, it was utter chaos. It followed no guideline and no routine, things Chastity found comfort in. She was scared to even drift a finger past what her parents had shown her of the world.

Clarisse smashed the bars of the birdcage wide open and yanked Chastity forward until they were both tumbling into the darkness beneath.

(Which was much less scary, Chastity learned, when you had someone to grasp onto to reassure you that you weren’t alone.)

Chastity knew with how Clarisse touched her, how she wasn’t afraid to talk extremely lewdly with her, that their relationship wasn’t normal when defining it within the normal parameters of friendship between two girls. Of course, she was afraid to fully define what she felt for Clarisse until Clarisse did it for her, pulling her in for a spontaneous kiss in the middle of skipping class with her.

“Wow, you’re acting like that was your first kiss,” Clarisse giggled when Chastity spluttered and turned red at the ears.

“I think it was,” Chastity muttered underneath her breath when her heart found its steady rhythm again.

There it was. The sweet, delicious high she was supposed to feel when kissing, when touching the one you loved. She couldn’t find it any boy, and she never will.

This was what she was supposed to be doing. This was what she was supposed to be feeling. For so long, she wondered if something was wrong with her, if she was destined to never feel love because she couldn’t find such feelings when with a boy.

(God would disapprove, but who cared what He thought when she had found another god-like being in front of her?)

Chastity had been scared, once. Scared that a relationship between two women would never be able to mimic one between a man and a woman. That it would be impossible for two female lovers to hold one another and desire to marry each other.

Clarisse dissolved all of those fears when she held Chastity. She no longer needed to wonder if a relationship with a man would feel more fulfilling than one with Clarisse.

Because her relationship with her _girlfriend_ already made her feel so much, how could one with a man ever double such feelings?

Still, fear still lingered in the back of her mind. When she and Clarisse cuddled together in the afterglow of their intimacy, her girlfriend fast asleep and Chastity wide awake and staring at the cracked ceiling, she couldn’t help but think of her parents, how desperately they wanted grandchildren, natural ones that weren’t conceived because of donated sperm, that were born of a husband and a wife like children were supposed to.

When she was young, she remembered not being able to get away with anything because of her mother claiming to know everything that ran through Chastity’s mind. Because of mother’s intuition.

(Can she sense this? Sense the pleasure she feels with Clarisse, the high she feels when in close proximity to her girlfriend. Sense how disgusting and degenerate and wonderful this all felt?)

In the end, it was futile. Their relationship was discovered, laid bare in front of her mother and father.

At first, there was stifling silence. Her mother’s smile cracking at the edges. Her father’s fists clenching and unclenching. Chastity trying to make sense how all of this happened in the first place.

Then, all hell broke loose.

“How dare you go behind our backs like this! We sympathized with you when we heard what girls called you at school! We never expected them to be right!”

“They weren’t right! Or, at least, not when they called me a slut who wanted to steal boys away from their girlfriends. But if you want the truth, plain and simple, then here it is: I like girls. I have always liked girls. Your daughter is a lesbian.”

“Don’t you dare say that word in front of your father!”

“Or else what? Are you going to throw me out onto the streets? Forget the eighteen years you spent raising me? Call me the child of the devil? Pour holy water on me?” “If you keep seeing that girl, then maybe we will!”

“Whatever happened to me being your daughter? Whatever happened to all the love you poured into raising me? To all the sacrifices you made for me so I could grow up happily?”

“All of those sacrifices were made for Chastity Ackerman, my pure and sweet child, not Chastity Ackerman, child of the devil!”

It all happened in a blur: the sound of your hand reverberating against your mother’s cheek, the purple that soon bloomed afterward.

At first, Chastity felt guilty. She wanted to apologize, to find an icepack and soothe your mother, tell her that she didn’t mean it and that she was wrong, of course she was, because she was a stupid child and stupid children were always wrong.

But then she remembered what her mother had said and her guilt froze over and turned into pure malice.

“If I’m just a child of the devil to you, then I guess I should go to hell like you want me to.”

She waited for her mother to light up with sorrow, to break down into tears and beg on her knees for her daughter’s forgiveness. For her father to wrap his arms around Chastity in a big bear hug like he used to and say that he was sorry to say such horrendous things to his own child.

But, like always, her expectations were disappointed.

“I guess you should,” her father muttered before he immediately rushed to his wife’s aid to help her up, like Chastity’s slap was that brutal.

(Maybe it was. It was, after all, the first time she called out her mother’s bullshit.)

When she went into her room for the night, she found a suitcase and a note telling her that whatever she can’t cram into there will be sold to charity.

Chastity burst out into laughter and tossed the note into the trash. Then she got straight to packing.

In the end, this was hardly a punishment. From the beginning, Chastity feared what was outside of the cage her parents built for her to live in, that anything unexplored was bound to dangerous.

But now she knew better, and she knew better because of Clarisse.

Everything was because of Clarisse.

Learning to be comfortable with her sexuality was because of her. Learning not to be afraid of anything unexplored was because of her. Learning to defy what her parents set out for her was because of Clarisse.

And now, nothing else mattered except Clarisse.

She thought of the adventures the two of them could have now that she was completely unshackled by her parents.

They could run away together and live in Los Angeles like Chastity always dreamed of, drive down the coast and eat parfaits together in the midst of summer. Live freely and show off their love shamelessly without anyone looking the other direction or jeering at them. They won’t ever have to be afraid of their love ever again.

Or at least, Chastity won’t. Clarisse was never, ever afraid of what she felt for her girlfriend, of her attraction to both males and females alike.

(There’s a skip in her step when she finally approached Clarisse’s house, when she rang her doorbell.)

(Once, twice. No answer. Huh.)

(Chastity shrugged and dialed Clarisse’s number on her phone and waited. And waited.)

(No answer from the phone and no answer from the door. And all the lights are turned off inside. There were no cars in the driveway.)

(Strange.)

(Chastity eventually fell asleep on the porch, praying to God that Clarisse will find her here soon before rain fell tonight.)

(She awoke to thunder ripping through the sky and dawn fast approaching. There was no one to brush the raindrops off of her face when pellets of water fell.)

* * *

_v. the victims_

* * *

In the end, it took you forever to gather all of them into one place.

Hector Christiansen lived in Orlando, Florida.

Jackson Hathaway lived in Annapolis, Maryland.

Oliver Lark lived in NYC.

And Chastity Ackerman in Phoenix, Arizona.

(You forgot how much she liked to travel.)

And worse, they were all in completely different situations.

Some, it was easy to whisk them away because they lived alone; others, it was hell to convince the people around them to trust that you weren’t going to do anything sketchy to them.

Hector had gotten addicted to drugs after she left him, devolved into a spiral of bottles and syringes. His mother didn’t want to believe it was true that her darling son became an addict, but there was no denying that he needed rehab. It was hell convincing his doctors you weren’t a human trafficker or a con man.

Jackson’s foster parents threw him into a mental institution after his second suicide attempt. Child services realized how damaging his foster father was to the already fragile and traumatized Jackson and it was hard to trust the boy on his own when he already attempted suicide twice. It was best to keep him in a place where people can rehabilitate him while simultaneously have extra measures to keep him from trying it again.

Oliver quickly fell from grace after the disappearance of his “beloved muse.” he threw a huge tantrum in front of the media, refused to play ever again for the masses, completely threw away a future at Juilliard or anywhere willing to accept stable children to teach. His parents disowned after the highly public scandal and now the boy lived in crappy apartments under a fake name in order not to attract lingering tabloids.

Chastity was perhaps the worst, living on the streets and selling her body to get by. You had to impersonate a customer in order to get to her and nobody even noticed she vanished when you offered to take her somewhere with food and heating.

The moment you uttered her name was when they immediately followed you without a word, without question.

In the end, it was like her spell still affected them, even though it had been years since she abandoned them, since she left them for greater places, for greater people.

(For greater toys.)

They stumbled over themselves asking how did you know her, if you had many clues to her whereabouts now, if it was possible to get in contact with her.

(No one knew, especially not you. No one could dictate or predict the endless enigma that was Clarisse Janson. You wouldn’t even be surprised if the bitch was in Antarctica at this point. She always did have a thirst for the unknown.)

It was like what she did to them didn’t even matter in the end. It didn’t matter she pushed Hector to seeking solace in drugs, caused Jackson to attempt suicide again, destroyed Oliver’s future, and completely obliterated any chances for Chastity to have a well-respecting home ever again.

In the end, they still loved her. They still adored her. They were still willing to follow her, no matter what she did to them or what they ended up doing because of her.

(They were still willing to off themselves if it meant she would take pleasure in painting her nails with their blood.)

You explained to all of them their connection to each other, how each of them were her playthings, her toys that she spun around on a puppet string in order to stave off her perpetual boredom.

You wanted all of them to realize how stupid they were for worshipping her so goddamn much, long after she abandoned all of them, how it didn’t matter how much light she supposedly brought them, in the end, she all dragged them into inescapable darkness.

But in the end, it was futile.

“She would never do that to me!”

“I was her beloved, as she was for me!”

“I don’t care what she sees me as, as long she would be willing to take me in her arms again!”

“Even being her toy would give me life meaning! I would gladly be her dog if it meant being in close proximity to her again!”

You wish you could be disgusted.

You wish you could see this meaningless loyalty as foreign, this unhealthy worship as something you had only seen on TV before now.

But in the end, there was no denying that you understood them. Understood why they loved her so much. Understood how they ended up seeing her the way they do.

Because Clarisse Janson was like fire. Something beautiful and warm, and when you had previously spent your life in a cold and dark place, a fire can seem like a blessing from God Himself.

But no matter how bright and warm fire was, no matter how much it saved you from freezing to death, it was still lethal. It still burned when you got too close. It could still kill you if you grew too attached to it.

And in the end, a fire flickers out. No matter how hard you try to preserve it. It always died when the night grows too dark or the cold too unbearable.

(It always abandoned you.)

“How do you even know her in the first place?” Jackson glared. From the get go, you realized he was undoubtedly the most unstable.

“Yeah, how dare you judge her?” Hector cried. He looked as if he was ready to kill a man (and he could’ve done so already before).

“What makes you think you know her better than I do?” Chastity cried, her fists clenched. Despite her fragile frame, you wouldn’t be surprised if she was capable of defending herself. After all, the streets were a dangerous place and the people she had to deal with everyday even more so.

What did make you think you know her better than all of them?

(Because you were with her from the beginning.)

(Because you once believed you were her most important person, as well.)

(Because she had stolen your first kiss, despite how young the two of you were.)

(Because you knew her both as the sweetest girl and the most despicable demon.)

They truly didn’t know. They didn’t know how corrupt Clarisse was from the very beginning. How much she loved holding power over others and abandoning them when she falls out of interest.

(Because she forced you to believe the things she did to you were normal.)

(Because she made the two of you act sickly sweet in front of the adults, only to devour you whole when the two of you were alone.)

(Because no matter how many times you cried, no matter how many times it hurt, she still pushed you down onto the mattress for “playtime,” despite your protests.)

(Because no matter how many times she promised you were her one and only, she still left you like she did all the others.)

(Because even you, no matter what you shared with her, couldn’t read what was going on in the mind of Clarisse Janson.)

“Hey, answer us!” Oliver yelled. You had never realized a former pianist, of all things, could look menacing. “What makes you think you know her better than all of us?”

All four of them, despite their conditions, looked ready to kill you. Ready to kill you for defiling the name of their supposed goddess.

(There was a time where you would’ve done the same.)

You sighed, and pulled down your collar to reveal what you’ve hidden from your friends and your parents because your sister told you to.

The crude scar left on your collarbone, the one made by Clarisse’s own teeth marks, the first time she sank her teeth into you and the first time you cried during your “intimate bonding time” because the pain was just too much at the time.

You sucked up your dignity and opened your mouth.

_“Because she even included her own little brother in the list of toys she liked to play with.”_


End file.
